He and Frank Sinatra are the only people who were awarded a competitive Oscar, an Honorary Award and a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the AMPAS.
He and his daughter Nell Potts were supposed to be in Paper Moon (1973) in the leading roles, but this changed when original director John Huston bowed out and was replaced by Peter Bogdanovich.
He has one brother, Arthur S. Newman Jr., who was named after their father, Arthur S. Newman, a successful sporting goods store owner.
He is a vocal supporter of gay marriage.
He is only one of five performers to be nominated for an Oscar twice for playing the same role in two separate films. He played as Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961) and The Color of Money (1986), Peter O'Toole as Henry II in Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968), Al Pacino as Michael Corleone for The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945) and Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).
He is the only performer, to date, to receive an Oscar for a repeated role. He won as "Fast Eddie Felson" in "The Color of Money", having been previously nominated as the same character in "The Hustler".
He was among the celebrities on the famous "Enemies List" kept by President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
He was director William Friedkin's first choice for the lead role of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection (1971), but he was deemed too expensive. The role went to Newman's good friend Gene Hackman.
He was nominated for nine acting Academy Awards in five different decades - the 1950s (Best Lead Actor for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)), 1960s (Best Lead Actor for The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967)), the 1980s (Best Lead Actor for Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982) and The Color of Money (1986) winning for this last film), the 1990s (Best Lead Actor for Nobody's Fool (1994)) and finally in 2002's Road to Perdition (2002) for Best Supporting Actor.
He was the visual inspiration for the original illustrations of superhero Green Lantern/Hal Jordan.
He was voted the 13th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
His father was of German heritage and his mother was of Hungarian heritage.
His father, Arthur, died in 1950 at the age of 55 and his mother, Theresa, died in 1982 at the age of 86.
His first wife, Jacqueline "Jackie" Witte, was born in September 1929.
His performance as Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is ranked #20 on the American Film Institute's 100 Heroes & Villains. This is a ranking which he shares with Robert Redford, who played the Sundance Kid.
His performance as Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961) is ranked #64 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
His performance as Frank Galvin in The Verdict (1982) is ranked #19 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
His performance as Luke Jackson in Cool Hand Luke (1967) is ranked #30 on the American Film Institute's 100 Heroes & Villains.
His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 7060 Hollywood Blvd.
In 2005 Premiere Magazine ranked him as the #6 Greatest Movie Star of All Time in their Stars in Our Constellation feature.